ply and
suddenly. "But," she added, resuming her icy manner in a moment, "I
have no secrets from my husband even in trifles. When he noticed just
now that I looked distressed, it was my painful duty to tell him why I
was distressed, and I frankly acknowledge to you, Miss Halcombe, that I
HAVE told him."

I was prepared to hear it, and yet she turned me cold all over when she
said those words.

"Let me earnestly entreat you, Madame Fosco--let me earnestly entreat
the Count--to make some allowances for the sad position in which my
sister is placed. She spoke while she was smarting under the insult
and injustice inflicted on her by her husband, and she was not herself
when she said those rash words. May I hope that they will be
considerately and generously forgiven?"

"Most assuredly," said the Count's quiet voice behind me. He had
stolen on us with his noiseless tread and his book in his hand from the
library.

"When Lady Glyde said those hasty words," he went on, "she did me an
injustice which I lament--and forgive. Let us never return to the
subject, Miss Halcombe; let us all comfortably combine to forget it
from this moment."

"You are very kind," I said, "you relieve me inexpressibly."

I tried to continue, but his eyes were on me; his deadly smile that
hides everything was set, hard, and unwavering on his broad, smooth
face. My distrust of his unfathomable falseness, my sense of my own
degradation in stooping to conciliate his wife and himself, so
disturbed and confused me, that the next words failed on my lips, and I
stood there in silence.

"I beg you on my knees to say no more, Miss Halcombe--I am truly
shocked that you should have thought it necessary to say so much." With
that polite speech he took my hand--oh, how I despise myself! oh, how
little comfort there is even in knowing that I submitted to it for
Laura's sake!--he took my hand and put it to his poisonous lips. Never
did I know all my horror of him till then. That innocent familiarity
turned my blood as if it had been the vilest insult that a man could
offer me. Yet I hid my disgust from him--I tried to smile--I, who once
mercilessly despised deceit in other women, was as false as the worst
of them, as false as the Judas whose lips had touched my hand.

I could not have maintained my degrading self-control--it is all that
redeems me in my own estimation to know that I could not--if he had
still continued to keep his eyes on my face.